The Michigan Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit claiming the state wrongfully accused thousands of people of unemployment fraud.

In 2013, the state started using an automated system to flag fraud cases. But the system wrongly identified tens of thousands of people – and some of them sued to get their money back, plus fees and interest.

But the court says they waited too long to file the lawsuit.

Jennifer Lord is an attorney for the plaintiffs. She says the state is abusing a legal technicality to evade responsibility, and the next stop is the Michigan Supreme Court.

“We want everyone to know we’re not giving up,” she said. “We’re in it for the long haul, and we’re going to continue to fight this as long as it takes.”

But, the delay, Lord said, “is going to cause immediate and continuing harm to tens of thousands of people."

Michigan Talent Investment Agency Director Wanda Stokes said the court made the right decision, and the state is working to fix the problems and get a refund to anyone who was wrongly accused or sanctioned.

Stokes said the agency has refunded or is in the process of refunding more than $16 million. She says the agency is also re-tooling its process for rooting out fraud to ensure there’s no repeat.

“People come to the Unemployment Insurance Agency when they are going through a difficult and stressful time in their lives,” she said. “We are focused on helping them get benefits they are entitled to as they find their next careers. We are working tirelessly to restore the public’s trust in our system, and we are on the road to doing that.”

A group of experts will try to figure out how a state computer glitch wrongly accused thousands of people of fraud.

Between October of 2013 and August of 2015, the agency’s processing system wrongfully accused tens of thousands of people of unemployment fraud. The agency had been almost exclusively relying on a computer program to determine unemployment fraud with very little human verification.

Stateside's conversation with Ken Sikkema, senior policy fellow at Public Sector Consultants and former Republican legislative leader, and Vicki Barnett, a former Democratic legislator

This week, Republicans and Democrats in Lansing seem to agree that it’s time to expand the state’s open record laws to cover the governor and the Legislature. Michigan is one of only a couple states that don’t already require all lawmakers to be subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

Ken Sikkema, senior policy fellow at Public Sector Consultants and a former Republican legislative leader, along with Vicki Barnett, a former Democratic legislator, joined Stateside and said it might not be smooth sailing to the governor's desk.